Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)

by Tamsyn Muir

“I meant it,” she said earnestly. “You were wonderful. You would have made that little nun such a cavalier—I almost wish you’d been mine.” “You couldn’t fucking afford me,” said Gideon.

The other, much newer Lyctor raised Naberius’s sword, kicking bones away for footing. “I’ve tried the sister thing already,” said Ianthe, circling around to one side, “and I wasn’t any good at it.” “But I have so much to teach you,” said Cytherea. They both charged. Once upon a time it would have been pretty cool to watch the perfect showman’s sword of the Third House compete against an ancient and undiluted warrior of the Seventh, but Gideon was crouching down next to Camilla and trying to gauge whether or not her own kneecap was trying to slide off somewhere weird. She had laid down the unconscious Harrowhark behind a pillar on a pile of the softest-looking bones, with her longsword for company, and was wishing fervently that her necromancer was awake. She grabbed Camilla’s shoulder in one hand and the slick bone spur in the other, said, “Sorry,” and pulled.

“I may be from the Ninth House,” said Gideon, “but if you say any more cryptic shit at me, you’re going to see how well you can regenerate when you’re in eighteen pieces.” “Cry mercy,” said Cytherea. The dimple was still there. “Please. You don’t even know what you are to me … You’re not going to die here, Gideon. And if you ask me to let you live you might not have to die at all. I’ve spared you before.”

“Nav,” she said, “have you really forgiven me?” Confirmed. They were all going to eat it. “Of course I have, you bozo.” “I don’t deserve it.” “Maybe not,” said Gideon, “but that doesn’t stop me forgiving you. Harrow—” “Yes?” “You know I don’t give a damn about the Locked Tomb, right? You know I only care about you,” she said in a brokenhearted rush. She didn’t know what she was trying to say, only that she had to say it now. With a bad, juddering noise, a tentacle had started to pound their splintering shelter again: WHAM. “I’m no good at this duty thing. I’m just me. I can’t do this without you. And I’m not your real cavalier primary, I never could’ve been.”

“Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House,” she said hoarsely, “you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer.”

Awww bitch

“Your arms are like fucking noodles,” said Gideon disapprovingly. “I’m a necromancer, Nav!” “Yeah, well, hope you like lifting weights for the next myriad.”

She winked. Harrow said— “I cannot do this.” “You already did it,” said Gideon. “It’s done. You ate me and rebuilt me. We can’t go home again.”

Wait what?

“Now we kick her ass until candy comes out,” said Gideon. “Oh, damn, Nonagesimus, don’t cry, we can’t fight her if you’re crying.” Harrow said, with some difficulty: “I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.” “Yes you can, it’s just less great and less hot,” said Gideon. “Fuck you, Nav—” “Harrowhark,” said Gideon the Ninth. “Someday you’ll die and get buried in the ground, and we can work this out then. For now—I can’t say you’ll be fine. I can’t say we did the right thing. I can’t tell you shit. I’m basically a hallucination produced by your brain chemistry while coping with the massive trauma of splicing in my brain chemistry. Even if I wasn’t, I don’t know jack, Harrow, I never did—except for one thing.”

She lifted Harrow’s arm with the hilt clutched in it. Her fingers, rough and strong and sure, moved Harrow’s other hand into place above the pommel. “I know the sword,” she said. “And now, so do you.” Gideon brought them into position: weight on the forward foot, knee bent a little, light on the right. She tilted the blade so that it was held with the blade pointed high before them, a perfect line. She moved Harrow’s head up and corrected her hips.

Is gideon dead?

Harrow said, “Don’t leave me.” “The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee,” said Gideon. “See you on the flip side, sugarlips.”

The sword made a terrific clatter as it dropped to the ground. The breeze blew Harrow’s hair into her mouth as she ran back and strained at the arms of her cavalier, pulled and pulled, so that she could take her off the spike and lay her on her back. Then she sat there for a long time. Beside her, Gideon lay smiling a small, tight, ready smile, stretched out beneath a blue and foreign sky.

Harrow could never tell precisely how she knew who he was, only that she did. She threw off the rustling thermal blanket—someone had dressed her in an unlovely turquoise hospital smock—and got out of bed, and she threw herself down shamelessly at the feet of the Necromancer Prime; the Resurrection; the God of the Nine Houses; the Emperor Undying. She pressed her forehead down onto the cold, clean tiles. “Please undo what I’ve done, Lord,” she said. “I will never ask anything of you, ever again, if you just give me back the life of Gideon Nav.” “I can’t,” he said. He had a bittersweet, scratchy voice, and it was infinitely gentle. “I would very much like to. But that soul’s inside you now. If I tried to pull it out, I’d take yours with it and destroy both in the process. What’s done is done is done. Now you have to live with it.”

“How dare you ask me to live with it?” The Emperor did not render her down to a pile of ash, as she partway wished he would. Instead, he rubbed at one temple, and he held her gaze, sombre and even. “Because,” he said, “the Empire is dying.” She said nothing. “If there had been any less need you would be sitting back home in Drearburh, living a long and quiet life with nothing to worry or hurt you, and your cavalier would still be alive. But there are things out there that even death cannot keep down. I have been fighting them since the Resurrection. I can’t fight them by myself.” Harrow said, “But you’re God.” And God said, “And I am not enough.” She retreated to sit on the edge of the bed, and she pulled the hem of her hospital smock down over her knees. He said, “It wasn’t meant to happen like this. I intended for the new Lyctors to become Lyctors after thinking and contemplating and genuinely understanding their sacrifice—an act of bravery, not an act of fear and desperation. Nobody was meant to lose their lives unwillingly at Canaan House. But—Cytherea…” The Emperor closed his eyes. “Cytherea was my fault,” he said. “She was the very best of all of us. The most loyal, the most humane, the most resilient. The one with the most capacity for kindness. I made her live ten thousand years in pain, because I was selfish and she let me.

“Who else beside me is alive, Lord?” “Ianthe Tridentarius,” said the Emperor, “minus one arm.” “The Sixth House cavalier was only injured when I left her,” said Harrowhark. “Where is she?” “We haven’t recovered any trace of her, or her body,” said the Emperor. “Nor that of Captain Deuteros of Trentham, nor of the Crown Princess of Ida.” “What?”

“All the Houses will have questions tonight,” he said. “I can hardly blame them. I’m sorry, Harrow, we couldn’t recover your cavalier either.” Her brain listed sharply. “Gideon’s gone?” “Everyone else is accounted for,” he said. “We have had to settle for partial remains of the Seventh House and the Warden of the Sixth. Only you two were confirmed alive. It doesn’t help matters that I can’t even go down there and search.” Harrow found herself saying, distantly, “Why can’t you go back? It seemed to be the whole of Cytherea’s plan.” The Emperor said, “I saved the world once—but not for me.” Harrow

He said, “I know you became a Lyctor under duress.” “Some may call it duress,” said Harrow. “You aren’t the first,” said the Emperor. “But—listen to me. I will do what I haven’t done in ten thousand years and renew your House.” (How did he know about that?) “I’ll safeguard the Ninth. I will make sure what happened at Canaan House never happens again. But I want you to come with me. You can learn to be my Hand. The Empire can gain another saint, and the Empire needs another saint, more than ever. I have three teachers for you, and a whole universe for you to hold on to—for just a little while longer.”

There was a vague reflection of her in the window, interrupted by distant space fields pocketed thick with stars. She turned away. If she saw herself in a mirror, she might fight herself: if she saw herself in a mirror, she might find a trace of Gideon Nav, or worse—she might not find anything, she might find nothing at all.

She said, “I will have to go back eventually.” “I know,” said the Emperor. “I need to find out what happened to my cavalier’s body. I need to know what happened to the others.” “Of course.” “But for now,” said Harrow, “I will be your Lyctor, Lord, if you will have me.” The Emperor said, “Then rise, Harrowhark the First.”